Observations of Instructor Led Training with Real Hardware

TechNow has heard many students talk about virtualized/remote training that TechNow Does Not Do.  While training our most recent offering of PA-215: Palo Alto Networks Firewall Essentials FastTrack a student told his story of how he endend up in our course.  His story we have heard for other technologies like Cisco, VMware, BlueCoat and other products.

A large percentage of training is moving to the virtualized/remote lab environments.  Students are asked to use some variant of remote access software and remote into the training company's lab environment. Our student in our Palo Alto Networks Firewall course informed us that he went to a very costly offering of that course from the vendor and was not able to perform any labs.  There were either network connectivity issues, or issues with the remote access software, or other problems.  The whole training experience was very frustrating and not productive.

We keep our labs open to students if they would like after hours, or before hours access.  Repeatedly going through a lab engrains that knowledge for later recall.  Touching hardware is so critical in understanding the problems that arise when a cable comes loose, or a cable gets plugged in the wrong port.  There are other scenarios such as just pulling the power cable, or turning off a power strip, or accidently overwriting a configuration.  These disaster scenarious requires hands-on physical access to hardware.  Preventing and recovering from disasters is what it's all about, and that requires hands-on, instructor led, real hardware.

Palo Alto Networks Firewall Training Course Lab

Working with the TechNow lab for the PA-215: Palo Alto Networks Firewall Essentials FastTrack course has been nothing less than a techie's idea of fun.  When students come in we are immediatly configuring the Cisco 3750 switches for access ports, VLANS, and trunks.  We then cable the switch to the Palo Alto Networks Firewall.  Each student gets their own Palo Alto Firewall Pod of hardware and software.  What we find as fun is the VLAN environment, with an array of virtual machines hosted on an ESXi server that can really exercise the abilities of the Palo Alto Firewall.  The DMZ VLAN hosts virtual machines that support enterprise services and also potentialy vulnerable web services.  The Trust VLAN has Windows and Linux clients.  The UnTrust VLAN has Web services and a VM of Kali. The hardware Firewall is additionally connected to a Management VLAN.  All those VLANs are trunked into an ESXi server where the student also has a VM-Series Palo Alto Networks Firewall for High Availability.  

After configuring all the trunking, VLANs, and network interfaces we learn about the firewall and configure it for the lab environment.  Using Metasploitable and Kali/Metasploit nefarious penetration attempts are executed.  Using packet captures, custom APP-ID's  and custom signatures are generated.  Custom logging and reporting are created to similate and enterprise and assist the desired Incident Response.  It is always fun in a training environment to learn all about the controls available in a product, even though specific controls may not be used in the operational environment.  In the end we have a good understanding of the Palo Alto Networks Firewall.

TN-415: Computer Hacking Forensics Investigator (CHFI)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Course Overview:

The Computer Hacking Forensic Investigator (CHFI) course delivers the security discipline of digital forensics from a vendor-neutral perspective. CHFI is a comprehensive course covering major forensic investigation scenarios and enabling students to acquire necessary hands-on experience with various forensic investigation techniques and standard forensic tools necessary to successfully carry out a computer forensic investigation leading to the prosecution of perpetrators.

The CHFI certification gives participants the necessary skills to perform an effective digital forensics investigation. CHRI presents a methodological approach to computer forensics including searching and seizing, chain-of-custody, acquisition, preservation, analysis and reporting of digital evidence

What’s Included:

  • 5 days of instructor-led in classroom training
  • Detailed Labs for hands-on learning experience; approximately 50% of training is dedicated to labs
  • Hundreds of investigation tools including EnCase, Access Data FTL, & ProDiscover
  • Huge cache of evidence files for analysis including RAW, .dd images, video & audio files, MS Office files, systems files, etc.
  • CHFI Courseware
  • Exam Voucher
  • CHFI onsite exam scheduling

Course Objectives:

  • Establish threat intelligence and key learning points to support pro-active profiling and scenario modeling
  • Perform anti-forensic methods detection
  • Perform post-intrusion analysis of electronic and digital media to determine the who, where, what, when, and how the intrusion occurred
  • Extract and analyze of logs from various devices like proxy, firewall, IPS, IDS, Desktop, laptop, servers, SIM tool, router firewall, switches AD server, DHCP logs, Access Control Logs & conclude as part of investigation process
  • Identify & check the possible source/ incident origin
  • Recover deleted files and partitions in Windows, MAC OS X, and Linux
  • Conduct reverse engineering for known and suspected malware files
  • Collect data using forensic technology methods in accordance with evidence handling procedures, including collection of hard copy and electronic documents

Dates/Locations:

No Events

Duration: 5 Days

Course Content:

    • Module 01. Computer Forensics in Today’s World
    • Module 02. Computer Forensics Investigation Process
    • Module 03. Understanding Hard Disks and File Systems
    • Module 04. Data Acquisition and Duplication
    • Module 05. Defeating Anti-forensics Techniques
    • Module 06. Operating System Forensics (Windows, Mac, Linux)
    • Module 07. Network Forensics
    • Module 08. Investigating Web Attacks
    • Module 09. Database Forensics
    • Module 10. Cloud Forensics
    • Module 10. Malware Forensics
    • Module 11. Investigating Email Crimes
    • Module 12. Investigating Email Crimes
    • Module 13. Mobile Forensics
    • Module 14. Forensics Report Writing and Presentation

 

Prerequisites:

      • 2+ years of proven information security work experience
      • Educational background with digital security specialization

    Target Audience:

      • Law Enforcement
      • Defense & Military
      • E-Business Security
      • Systems Administrators
      • Legal Professionals
      • Banking & Insurance professionals
      • Government Agencies
      • IT Managers

  • Comments

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PL-115: Fundamentals of Computer Programming

 

Course Overview:

This hands-on course provides a comprehensive introduction to programming logic, and builds a solid foundation of programming skills that can be used to master additional programming languages like C, C++, PERL, Java or Python. To learn programming you must focus on a particular language, and we have chosen Java.  In this course you will write and debug programs in Python. If you would like this course to use a different computer language, that can be arranged.

Attendees to PL-115: Fundamentals of Computer Programming will receive TechNow approved course materials and expert instruction.

Dates/Locations:

No Events

Duration: 5 Days

Course Objectives:

  • Writing Simple Programs Data Types, Constants, & Variables
  • Screen Output & Keyboard Input
  • Expressions
  • Decision Making
  • Looping
  • Subroutines
  • Debugging
  • Data Collections – Arrays
  • Data Collections – Classes Working with Files

Prerequisites:

  • This course is for students starting out in programming.  No programming experience is required.

 

Comments

Latest comments from students

User: tsonger

Instructor comments: While I could tell the instructor was very knowledgeable, his instructions were not very clear. He could've done a better job preparing for the class.

Facilities comments: Room was fine. The location of the room could have been better as the dings from the elevator were a bit distractive.

User: TracyPaul

Instructor comments: Very knowledgeable. Diagnosed our programming problems in short order. Could go into the details of 'why', versus only the 'how'.

Facilities comments: Outstanding. The hotel staff did a great job supporting our class.

 

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PM-325: Project Management Professional (PMP) Exam Preparation

Course Overview:

This course is developed for those individuals seeking to pass the Project Management Institute’s PMP certification exam, as well as any individual who has attended any Project Management Certification program in the past and needs to brush up on the material needed to pass the PMP exam.

Attendees to PM-325: Project Management Professional (PMP) Exam Preparation will receive official PMI (Project Management Institute) course materials and expert instruction from an official PMI Instructor.

TechNow Inc. is an official Authorized Training Partner of The Project Management Institute (PMI).

 

Dates/Locations:

No Events

Duration: 5 Days

Course Objectives:

  • Project Initiation
  • Examining the Project Management Framework
  • Examining the Project Management Processes
  • Implementing Project Integration Management
  • Managing the Project Scope
  • Introducing Project Time Management
  • Introducing Project Cost Management
  • Introducing Project Quality Management
  • Introducing Project Human Resource Management
  • Introducing Project Communications Management
  • Introducing Project Risk Management
  • Introducing Project Procurement Management
  • PMP Code of Professional Conduct

Prerequisites:

A Bachelor’s degree & 4,500 hours of project management experience over 3 years/36 months.

OR

7,500 hours of project management experience over 5 years/60 months (if NO degree).

AND

Complete & submit the PMP certification application directly to PMI

Comments

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